1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to telephony and, more particularly, to processes and systems for managing and controlling test requests and test results.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most residential and business telephone customers are connected to telephone systems by copper cables and wires. These copper cables are the familiar one or more telephone lines running throughout nearly every home in the United States. Because copper cable and wire connects each home, and many businesses, to the telephone system, the Public Switched Telephone Network is composed of millions of copper cables and wires. Each of these copper cables must be maintained to provide superior telephone service to the customer.
Yet maintaining these copper cables and wires is an extraordinary task. The Public Switched Telephone Network, with its millions of copper cables and wires, may receive hundreds of maintenance calls per day. These maintenance calls, in turn, may result in hundreds of maintenance work orders. A single cable fault, for example, may sever telephone service to hundreds of customers. Construction crews can inadvertently severe telephone service to hundreds of customers. Storms, floods, and other natural disasters can interrupt telephone service and require thousands of man-hours of restoration. Even common, everyday exposure to ozone, summer heat, winter cold, and water can deteriorate and degrade copper cables and wires. These hundreds of daily maintenance calls, and the resultant work orders, must be efficiently managed to prevent maintenance costs from eroding profits.
Test verification is one problem to efficient work order management. Testing is used to verify a problem exists within the communication/telephone system. Before a work order is created, for example, a customer representative may request an automated test, such as a mechanized loop test, to verify the customer's complaint. With hundreds of daily maintenance calls, however, the corresponding number of requests for test verification soon creates a backlog. As the backlog grows, there is no method of prioritization. Older, or less important, requests may be intermixed with urgent, high priority requests. This lack of prioritization often means that automated testing time is wasted on less important, or even unimportant, requests, thus creating inefficient test management practices.
Another problem with test verification is inaccurate testability data. The automated test often requires some type of testability data to verify a problem within the communication system. The mechanized loop test, for example, requires fresh telephone line records for an accurate verification of a problem. An automated test of a fiber optic network would also require fresh data describing the current optical network configuration. This testability data, however, is maintained in static databases that require manual updating. Because this manual updating is often a slow process, the testability data rarely reflects fresh information. Even if the testability data is fresh, the manual updates are prone to human error. The testability data, therefore, is often outdated and irrelevant and thus creating inefficient test management practices.
The outdated, inaccurate testability data creates a further cascade toward error. When the testability data is old, or known to be inaccurate, the automated test may reject the testability data. If the automated test rejects the testability data, the testability data must be manually updated. The manual update, slow and prone to human error, further delays the request. These test management practices further cascade toward inefficiency.
There is, accordingly, a need in the art for test management systems that prioritize requests for tests of communication systems, that dynamically and accurately provide testability data for tests of communications systems, that reduce the need for manual updates, and that reduce the costs of communication system testing.